Massive breakdown of medical services in Calcutta due to protest by junior doctors

It was a grim catalogue - by the end of last fortnight, six children were dead, 50,000 out-patients were being turned away everyday from Calcutta's free government hospitals, and thousands of in-patients were sent home in various stages of uncured illness.

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Sumanta Sen

July 15, 2013

ISSUE DATE: October 31, 1983

UPDATED: June 25, 2014 14:27 IST

It was a grim catalogue - by the end of last fortnight, six children were dead, 50,000 out-patients were being turned away everyday from Calcutta's free government hospitals, and thousands of in-patients were sent home in various stages of uncured illness.

Ironically, the reason for this massive breakdown of medical services in the city was the protest of the junior doctors against what they termed inadequate facilities in their hospitals. The doctors resented the fact that because they were not given sufficient medical supplies to treat patients, they were subject to violent attacks from the relatives of the patients.

But more specifically, the doctors were agitating against the police lathi charge last fortnight against their colleagues from the National Medical College, who had gheraoed their hospital superintendent, as part of the protest movement. But even as the figures mounted on the catalogue of the suffering, the striking doctors remained unrelenting.

The agitation had actually begun last month when junior doctors sought to draw attention to the unsatisfactory conditions of work - assaults on nurses and junior doctors, they claimed, had almost become a matter of routine.

If a patient died because the right medicine was not available, they were being held responsible for the death by the relatives, and they contended that it was impossible to function in such a situation. And even as the movement gathered momentum last month two doctors were assaulted at the Chittaranjan and National Medical College hospitals.

Rigid Stand: The state Government has hardly been sympathetic to the strikers. It announced a pay cut for the period of absence from work, and threatened to hold back house staffship certificates unless the junior doctors worked overtime to make up.

Said Health Minister Ambarish Mukherjee darkly: "There are other motives behind the strike, as measures have been taken to ensure smooth supply of medicine and security arrangements have been made for the junior doctors and nursing staff."

The Government announcement only served to rekindle the anger of the strikers. They immediately threatened a gherao of hospital authorities unless the latest strictures were withdrawn, and this time, even senior government doctors belonging to the Health Service Association, jumped into the fray.

The consequences of this development were fatal for some: three children died at the B.C. Roy Hospital for lack of medical attention. According to reports, one of them died because someone had pulled off the oxygen nozzle. Three others died when refused admission into the hospital.

What makes the situation even more unsavoury is the evidence that political parties are involved. Although the doctors staunchly maintain they have nothing to do with politics, their agitation is openly being supported by two opposition parties: the Congress(I) and the Socialist Unity Centre of India.

Says Subrata Mukherjee, leader of the Chhatra Parishad, students' wing of the Congress(I): "My boys are very active among the doctors in all the hospitals except the Calcutta Medical College where the Naxalites are more powerful."

Covert Support: Support for the doctors has come, albeit covertly, from constituents of the ruling party as well. Immediately after the lathi charge on doctors, parties like the Communist Party of India and the Forward Bloc cautioned the Government and suggested that it "seek a solution through negotiation rather than administrative measures".

These and other parties also seek to project the situation as a confrontation between the doctors and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), as the Health Department forms the CPI(M)'s share of the government cake.

With Chief Minister Jyoti Basu away in Srinagar when the strike began, Acting Chief Minister Benoy Chowdhury appointed a committee of eminent doctors including Murari Mohan Mukherjee, Mani Biswas and Nalini Konar to act as mediators, only to have the offer spurned by the agitators.

Chowdhury, however, said firmly that while negotiation would always be welcome, "it would be a mistake if the doctors think they can make the Government buckle at the point of their bayonet and concede their unjust demands."

The Government is upset by another aspect of the strike. Says Ambarish Mukherjee: "Some multinational companies are helping the doctors. Otherwise, where would they get such unlimited supplies of costly drugs that they distributed free at their parallel clinics which they ran during their seven-day cease-work?"

The minister has all along been saying that the companies are sore at the Government's policy of having drugs called by their generic names, and not by the brand names as is the normal procedure now.

If the generic names of drugs were mentioned in the prescriptions, patients would be able to buy the same drugs manufactured by Indian companies, at cheaper rates. According to Mukherjee, this would also help cut down the pilferage of drugs from hospitals. But junior doctors like Joydeb Pathak are not so sure. Says he: "This is nothing more than a gimmick, as very soon the pilferers will get acquainted with the new names also."

Tragic Consequences: Meanwhile, the strike has led to rather depressing situations: relatives of people who have died in accidents find that there is no one to give them a post-mortem report, without which they will not get the death certificate which is essential before a cremation can be performed.

Although the strikers deny that this is the case, an eminent surgeon said unambiguously: "Post-mortem operations have come to a halt in all hospitals and only a limited number of operations are being conducted by police surgeons."

In a grotesque twist to the story, as striking doctors left the Nilratan Sarkar Medical College Hospital - the biggest in the state - somebody switched off the airconditioning in the morgue.

The man in the street, who was initially sympathetic, seems to be disillusioned, too. Said R. Sinha Roy, a resident of central Calcutta who had watched a late-night procession of the doctors: "The kind of language they used and their gesticulations made it difficult to believe that they belong to what is a highly-respected profession."

But the Government was not spared, either. Noted film maker Mrinal Sen was quoted in the Bengali daily Aaj Kaal as saying: "What has the Left Front Government done to improve conditions in hospitals?"

Last fortnight, however, the question that loomed large over the city was: "Does the best method of drawing attention to inadequate facilities lie in withdrawing whatever little facility that is available?" For that is undoubtedly what the doctors did, and are doing, ensuring thereby that lakhs of patients have been held to dangerous ransom.

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